Displaced in America: Mapping Property Loss Across the United States (2024)

FAQs

What state has the highest eviction rate? ›

South Carolina experienced the highest eviction rate of any state between 2014 and 2016, at a rate of 6.2 percent and with an average of 26,430 evictions per year. 22 Twenty of South Carolina's 46 counties see rates of evictions greater than 5 percent, about twice the national average.

That's evident in the U.S. Census Bureau's newly released results from its national household surveys showing who was displaced by disasters in 2023. Overall, the Census Bureau estimates that nearly 2.5 million Americans had to leave their homes because of disasters in 2023, whether for a short period or much longer.

American Housing Survey.

Researchers estimated a national physical eviction rate of 5.3 percent based on the results of these questions.

The need for a national housing loss rate

Each year, an estimated 10 to 20 million Americans lose their homes through eviction and mortgage foreclosure, tax sales, eminent domain, post-disaster displacement, and other less-studied forms of housing loss.

Every year, more than 25 percent of Black children living in rental households receive an eviction filing, according to new data released in the fall of 2023. This makes Black children and their mothers the demographic most at risk of experiencing an eviction in the United States.

The Tenant Has Not Paid the Rent

This is the most common reason for eviction and is also the most straightforward. In most states, the landlord must give the tenant a certain amount of time to catch up on the rent, usually three to five days.

Poor households are at greatest risk of eviction. As household income increases, the risk of being threatened with eviction falls.

Of the 22.4 million renters who are rent-burdened, the study found that roughly half of them are spending more than 50% of their income toward rent.

Why Homes Are Vacant. Given the housing shortage in the U.S., you might wonder why these units remain unoccupied. LendingTree's analysis showed that the most prevalent reason (26.61%) for vacant housing units in the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas is that they are available for rent.

How long do most houses last? ›

Courtesy of the artists. The average lifespan of a house in the United States is between 50 and 63 years, from construction to demolition.

There are many ways to assess the trajectory of the American housing market, but two important indicators are the total number of vacant homes and the vacancy rate, which varies across the country. According to the Census Bureau, there were approximately 15.1 million vacant homes nationwide in 2022.

The easiest states to evict tenants

Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina have some of the fastest and most lenient eviction processes in the country. In Louisiana, the average eviction can be completed in as little as two to five weeks.

Renters make up a much larger share of households in California (44%) than in the rest of the US (35%)—or in any state other than New York (46%), according to the US Census.

Viewing 2016 eviction rankings for locations across America, Eviction Lab listed North Charleston, South Carolina (16.5% eviction rate); Richmond, Virginia (11.44%); Hampton, Virginia (10.49%); Newport News, Virginia (10.23%) and Jackson, Mississippi, (8.75%) as the top evicting large cities in the United States.